From Brian Hotton
IN A very short time the States are going to debate, once again, the Millennium Town Park.

As suggested by the Jersey Evening Post columnist Ben Queree ‘the increasingly hilariously named Millennium Town Park’.

What is going to make this park even ‘more hilarious’ is the fact that according to the ‘Hopkins Master plan’ there should be houses on this site as well as the park to help pay for the Town Park.

I may be mistaken but I feel sure that a sum of money was voted to this many, many years ago, long before ‘Senator Ring-Binder’ was in the States Chamber, even though we should be thankful to this Senator.

The suggestion of building houses on this site cannot be taken seriously, I believe it was just a delaying tactic so the original sum of money could be returned and put with the £10 million voted for with the aid of Ring-Binder.

I would like to remind politicians who were out of the Island on extended holidays, that in a letter of 2 November 2009 I suggested that instead of seeing the Millennium Town Park as a cost, it should be looked at as an investment.

Because the contaminated ground has to be removed, I believe several metres down, then what better opportunity could one hope for, to put in the foundations of an underground car park?

A car park that will bring in an ongoing revenue to the Treasury, a return of between five and ten per cent is feasible.

The alternative plan is to build houses on the periphery to help pay for the park.
The problem here is to raise any meaningful sum, say £5 million, would need approximately 50 houses on the site. Either the houses are to be very small or more than 50 houses or high rise flats, this in what must be the most overpopulated area of town. How could the States highly paid planners have missed this, more so the Hopkins planners.

Senator Cohen, on BBC Radio Jersey (12 April), speaking against the underground car park, suggested that Green Street car park be extended.

This extension, would it be for the residents of north of town, Bath Street, St Mark’s Road and Gas Place area to park their cars? Only a short 15-minute walk for the fit, what about the elderly and infirm?

The only viable answer for the Millennium Town Park is for an underground car park which will help pay for the Town Park with an ongoing return to the Treasury.

Building houses will not help pay for the Town Park, they will merely pay for the ground they occupy, and maybe even complain that ‘people are enjoying themselves on the little bit of green’.